“Incredibly Brave Woman”
Climber protests by not wearing a headscarf
10/17/2022 1:23 p.m
Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi competes bareheaded at the Asian Games. An affront and a breach of the law. Pro-government media are outraged, there will be a reaction from the government. But the courageous woman is celebrated for her “revolution”.
Iran’s climbing champion Elnaz Rekabi took off the headgear that is obligatory for Iranian athletes in the final of the Asian Championships in Seoul. Normally Rekabi wears a Hidschood, a mixture of veil and headgear, at competitions, but she didn’t wear it in Seoul. Iranian media reacted with outrage to the incident. “It remains to be seen how the sports ministry will react to this action,” wrote the pro-government newspaper Hamshahri.
On social media, however, the athlete was celebrated by the Iranians. “We are proud of you,” said one of the numerous reactions on Twitter. The BBC correspondent Bahma Kalbasi spoke of an “incredible moment”. 1-Live host Donya Farahani wrote, “This brave woman! Incredibly brave woman!” In the end, Rekabi took fourth place.
“Revolution in Iranian Professional Sports”
Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian women have been required to wear headscarves and long jackets in public to hide their hair and body contours. This law also applies to all female athletes in the Islamic country, especially in competitions abroad. Accordingly, Rekabi would have clearly violated the headscarf law. You are expected to be excluded from the national team. The journalist Natalie Amiri, who headed the ARD studio in the Iranian capital Tehran until April 2020, asked in a tweet whether Rekabi could now return to her homeland at all. The act is “a revolution in Iranian professional sport”.
According to observers, her action in Seoul was also to be seen in connection with the ongoing women’s protests against compulsory headscarves in Iran, as a signal of her solidarity with the women’s movement. The protests were triggered by the still unsolved death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. The young woman was arrested by the moral police last month because her headscarf had slipped slightly and a few strands of hair were visible. Rekabi once said to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” in 2015 that she “loves climbing far too much, it gave me self-confidence. It’s not just a sport for me.”